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Anabaptism

For some years now I’ve been challenged with the Catholic church, and particularly my own experience with Catholic faith. I have since made the decision to start taking my Christianity a bit more seriously.

Jesus doesn’t want us to eat red meat on Good Fridays. That has been the extent of my faith, and the faith of my immediate family and friends. If that was why Jesus came to earth, I’m sure he could’ve gotten the message across in a far less painful way.

What turned me to start taking my faith seriously was my time on a Peace Convergence where a group of Activists (95% Christians) successfully blockaded the Entrance to the Swan Island Military Training Facility in the south of Victoria, Australia. We managed to then break into the facility which slowed any operations on the island contributing to the killing machine abroad and bring media attention to the fact that Australia has no intentions to pull out.

But I digress (more on that in another post), I had somewhat of an epiphany when I was on said convergence about taking Christ more seriously.

I had grown tired of the poster boy Jesus of the catholic church in which I only ever knew Jesus in two stages being – Infant represented as the son of God, and as the martyred lamb on the cross but I had never once heard my faith talk about the Jesus that was a revolutionary of Radical Love that came in between those two points that justified him to be the son of god, and lead him to be the martyred lamb. The Catholic Church to me was in a way trying to coverup the life of Jesus almost as if he weren’t perfect and they didn’t approve of Jesus kicking it with the thieves, the lepers, the sick, the prostitutes and the most ‘unholy’ of beings. It almost makes me think a little of the Archdiocese of New York and his pressure on Dorothy Day to change the name of the Catholic worker because he felt the Church and the Newspaper best had no association.

I was baptised as an infant like so many others and never needed to make the conscious effort to be more of a Christian, than a non baptised person who wore a sign around their neck saying ‘baptised christian’. This is with many thanks to Emperor Constantine for making Infant Baptism essential for all whom lived in the state. Prior to this, to become baptised was to make a Radical conscious effort to reject and die to the world of destruction, hate, lust, injustice and become born again forever standing in no mans land. Radical. In that day, to be baptised meant more than avoiding hell, but becoming a disciple of Jesus and serving others as Jesus had.

I found out yesterday that the plane that in WWII bombed Nagasaki – the largest Christian City in Japan, was blessed by a Christian Chaplain (Fr. George Zabelka).

The Juxtaposition of the blessing of bombs hurts my head.

When Christians aren’t Christ-like. That hurts my head. I want to note here though, that this isn’t about my righteousness, this is in no way about how I am better than other Christians because i want to take it seriously yadda-yadda-yar. This is about how I want to see ‘the church be now what the world will be ultimately’ (John H. Yoder).

I’m inspired by Christian Radicals, but right now, I’m just trying to be Christian.